Redemption Road(144)

Elizabeth stared out at the street, feeling the weight of it. The can led to Adrian, then to the blood sample and the DNA match. It led to his conviction, his torture, and all the evil the warden had brought into Elizabeth’s life. “Without the can we might have caught my father thirteen years ago. Lauren Lester, Ramona Morgan, Adrian’s wife. They might all have lived. Eleven women, Charlie. We could have stopped it.”

“Maybe.”

“Is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?”

“I’d apologize a thousand times if I thought it would help.”

But Elizabeth didn’t want to hear his apologies or explanations. It was all so clear. A stupid crime and a simple misdirection, prison and pointless death, ripples on some foreign shore. “Tell me about the warden.”

“We were friends before I knew what kind of man he was. I got drunk once and told him what happened. My wife, the beer can. He’s held the truth over me ever since.”

“What did he want?”

“Adrian’s location. He wanted that, and he wanted you to stay clear. That’s it. That’s all.”

“Until he tortured Gideon and killed my father.”

“Liz—”

“The innocent people in that motel room.”

Beckett looked down. He had no words.

“Does your wife know?”

“None of it. She can’t. It would kill her.”

Elizabeth leaned against the porch rail, crossed her arms.

“What are you going to do?” Beckett asked.

“About you? That’s Adrian’s decision.”

“Liz, listen…”

She didn’t plan to listen. The anger was too intense. It was all so stupid and needless and destructive. She felt the love for Charlie down deep, but like a shadow on her heart. Her father should have been stopped years ago. Those women should be alive, and Adrian should never have gone to prison. What excuse was there? What path to forgiveness?

She was about to leave without another word, to turn on her heel and never look back, but she saw Charlie’s wife in the open door, Carol, who’d started it all.

“Hello, Liz.” She stepped onto the porch, a soft, round woman with warm eyes and a broad, rich smile. “I’m so happy to see you.”

“Are you?”

Elizabeth felt the stiffness and the cold, but Carol seemed oblivious. She swept across the porch, wrapped her arms around Elizabeth, and pulled her into all that softness. “You poor thing. What you’ve suffered, my God. You poor, sweet, unfortunate thing.” Elizabeth kept her guard up, but Carol’s affection was unstoppable. “Charlie told me you saved his life, that he’d have died without you. Thank you for that, for my husband’s life.”

She stepped back, and Elizabeth wondered at the lie Charlie had told. There was such love between him and Carol, and maybe that’s why he’d done it, so Elizabeth would be part of that, too. She didn’t know, and looking at Carol’s broad, beaming face, she didn’t really care. The past was past, and she was moving on.

“You should know,” Elizabeth said, “that Charlie would do anything for you.” She held Carol’s eyes. “Anything at all. That’s how much he loves you.”

Carol beamed even more, and that was Elizabeth’s final gift, not of forgiveness but silence, the chance for one good thing to remain when she left.

“Good-bye, Charlie.” She stepped off the porch and left them there. “I’m sorry about the wheelchair.”

“Liz—”

“Take care of each other.”

“Liz, wait.”

But Elizabeth didn’t wait. She walked away and took a final look from the truck. Beckett was in the chair and unmoving, his hands spread on the quilt as his wife leaned close and smiled and kissed his cheek. What would Adrian do with what she’d learned about Beckett’s betrayal and Carol’s original sin? She didn’t know for sure, but a stillness had been in Adrian these last weeks, a keenness to lift his arm and let life break like a current around him. Like her, he cared more for the future than the past, more for hope than anger.

She thought Charlie would be okay.

Starting the truck, she worked it past the abandoned plants, and down the long hill on the bad side of town. She followed the creek and found Gideon’s home as abandoned and broken as the one she’d left behind the clapboarded church. A foreclosure notice was nailed to the frame, but it seemed the bank didn’t care too much for the house. The door stood open. Dead leaves stirred on the threshold. Elizabeth sat for a long time and worried for the boy. Without her, the house was all he had: the sad, small house and the sad, small father. Turning across the broken road, she went to the fourth place on her list and found Faircloth on the front porch of his grand old home. He was draped in blankets and safeguarded by a round-faced nurse with a sunny disposition. “Are you here to see Mr. Jones? How lovely.” She bustled across the porch and met Elizabeth at the top step. “He gets so few visitors.”

Elizabeth followed her to Faircloth’s side. His mouth and left eye drooped. At his right hand was a table with pen and paper, and an old-fashioned with a straw that was curved and damp and as red as the cherry in the bottom of the glass. “He can’t speak,” the nurse said, “but he’s in there all the same.”